Chase Twichell

Walky-Talky

Sometimes in early evening neighborhood kidsplayed in the unfinished house,or sat in the saddle-seat of the front-loaderditched on the future lawn.We were children; we went where we wanted,skirting the backyards under the salt of stars.If you stuck a flashlight in your mouthyou could see the blood inside the cheeks,but not the bones. Two tin cans and a taut stringmade a telephone through which a voicecould be heard but not understood.Walky-talkies sputtered and failed.To whom did I imagine I was speaking?Someone invisible in the airwaves,hidden in the infinite leaves of June.

How strange, to send out words,like fishing without a hook,just a glittering lure cast into spacebaited with some morsel of kid-consciousness,who knows what now, probablythe wish for a horse, or a spellto ward off the alcoholic tang of aftershaveon my shirt, man-perfumesurviving the laundry unforgotten.

The daughter of a famous ornithologistlived down the street. Once, she openedher father’s shallow drawers for us:hummingbirds, eyeless, row upon row,uncountable, identical, with anklets of gold wire.Like those tiny bodies—fusty, perfect,labeled, dead—the children are mute now,abandoned to dream of their fearsand amnesias as best they can.

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